Ipvanish – PureVPN Review – 2019

BackgroundIpvanish

PureVPN has been providing VPN services since 2007 It’s not surprising that it now claims a long list of attributes: 2,000+ self-managed servers around 180+ locations, a wide selection of protocols, torrent support, DNS and IPv6 flow security, a smart kill switch, five devices allowed and payment via Bitcoin should you need it. Ipvanish

Unusual Extras comprise’split tunneling’ (you decide which traffic goes via the VPN, and uses your ISP) and the ability to create an instantaneous Wi-Fi VPN hotspot on your laptop, and connect more devices through that.

The Company offers dedicated apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and Linux, extensions for Chrome and Firefox, and more downloads and tutorials that will assist you set this up on routers, Kodi, Android TV, Amazon’s Fire TV Stick and more.

PureVPN PureVPN subscription choices:

12 month plan – $5.75 a month ($69 total cost)

The Monthly plan is typical value at $11 (#8.40), but the yearly program is merely a monthly $2.99 (#2.30), a really good thing.

This Drops into a monthly $1.32 (#1) should you pay for 5 decades upfront, a total of 79 (#61). The price is really low, although we would recommend signing up for that long, you may think it’s worthwhile. Private online Access offers a good two-year plan for $2.91 (#2.24) per month, for instance, but that is still $70 (#54) in complete, less. If you only use PureVPN for a couple of years, you’re getting adequate value.

The By utilizing some marketing trickery this fantastic impression is spoilt by company a little. Each program has a’last sold’ indicator which tells you if someone signed up, and it.

This is Presumably meant to explain to you how popular the service is, but we are not certain the figures are real. We visited in various browsers, and refreshed the page a few times, and also the’last sold’ figures varied widely. They behave as though they’re chosen randomly, rather than corresponding to any real world events.

PureVPN does not advertise a trial on the site. We dug deep and found a webpage for something known as a’trial account’, but that’s a little misleading. It’s really just a commercial plan in which you pay a non-refundable $2.50 (#2) for 3 days of service.

A 31-day money-back guarantee is for your . PureVPN’s refund policy utilized to incorporate some sneaky circumstances where you wouldn’t get your money back if you’d connected more than 100 times, or used more than 3GB of data transport, but we were happy to see these have been dropped. It is currently promoted as a’no questions asked, risk-free, stress-free’ money-back guarantee, so if you are miserable, just send an email and request a refund. Ipvanish

Apps

Handing Over your cash to PureVPN is unusually simple, as the company supports just about every payment format there is: credit card, PayPal, Bitcoin and many different cryptocurrencies (via CoinPayments), AliPay, various gift cards, and more than 150 additional payment procedures via the Paymentwall platform.

After Parting with your money, download links direct you to programs for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android, the browser extensions and more. We caught the Windows client, and there arrived a email with login details, as it had been downloading.

Installation Was simple, and after a speedy launch, the Windows customer prompted us to select one of five modes: Stream, Internet Freedom, Security/Privacy, File Sharing and Dedicated IP. We suspect most folks will wonder whether to choose Security/Privacy or Internet Freedom, and there is no instant guidance.

The Support website told us that choosing a manner could optimize PureVPN’s settings for that undertaking. For example, picking Security/Privacy would prioritize security above all else, however, File Sharing manners and the Streaming would optimize for speed.

VPN This approach might be appreciated by novices as it means that they do not have to know and tweak the preferences that are . But experts are likely to approve, since there’s no clear indication of what each mode does. There is nothing wrong with task-based style choice, but we’d like a clear display of those settings that are unsuitable for each style, so experienced users may comprehend the effects of their selection.

After Selecting a mode, you’re able to select at locations. This has lots of functionality, enabling you to browse locations by cities or countries, search by title, see ping times, or make favorites for quick recall afterwards.

Alternatively, Deciding upon a Purpose choice displays a list of tasks you may want to execute — unblocking Netflix or other streaming sites, using VoIP, obtaining social media sites or whatever — and you can in theory select among these, and allow PureVPN to choose a server for you.

Connect To the client and a server displays your link status. There is also an optional bandwidth graph showing your information transfers. You almost certainly won’t want it, but it is excellent to see PureVPN making the attempt.

The Customer makes clever of use of alarms to make sure that you know what is happening. Choose a location it will not waste your time. But if you switch to a different program, the customer notices, and a pop-up window appears to let you know when it connects and disconnects.

A bonus Characteristic blocks access. We’d always prefer to buy this kind of attribute from a professional security company, however, Gravity is far smarter than the majority of the VPN-related contest. As well as blocking harmful links, it may turn on Safe Search for the main search engines, block entire categories of website, whitelist sites you always wish to get into, and blacklist websites you do not. Oh, and it may block advertisements , also. Ipvanish

The Settings Box is a highlight, especially for experienced users, since it is absolutely stuffed with extras that are intriguing and odd.

The Customer does not just have options to start on system start and auto-connect, as an example. It can open your default browser as soon as you’re protected.

Need a Different protocol? PureVPN allows you to choose from OpenVPN TCP/UDP, PPTP, L2TP, SSTP and IKEV. There’s also an automated alternative which the client suggests offers the very best security and speed, but from what we can see, that is not true: it just cycles through the other protocols till it finds one that works.

Split Tunneling allows you to send the traffic of programs that are specified through your VPN. That requires more time to install, and you have to be quite sure which programs you want to divert, but it may additionally optimize performance by restricting your data transfer requirements.

The VPN Hotspot is an unusual additional, configuring a wireless hotspot which effectively turns the host computer into a limited VPN router. Once it’s enabled, you’ll be able to use your telephone, tablet or other devices to go online via the host’s PureVPN connection.

And the List goes on, with IPv6 leak security, a remarkably configurable kill button, along with a multi-port option which intelligently chooses the best port, preventing any closed or throttled options. You can opt to use a non-NAT network to acquire a special IP address, port forwarding is available should you need this, along with a Support department doesn’t simply link to the website: it eases creating a service ticket from inside the client.

Although There is lots of power , the port is a clumsy and inconsistent mess. There are normal buttons, radio buttons, icons, links and sidebars, they don’t necessarily work as you’d expect, and even though we figured out how to navigate across the system, it never felt natural or comfortable.

Still, The client did a good job for us, blocking DNS and WebRTC leaks, with the kill button successfully killing our internet access if the VPN connection fell. If you’ll use a number of the customer’s many extra features, it may appeal.

We took a Look at PureVPN’s Android program, and it had been much the same story since the Windows version. After picking a’Mode’ (still not sure why), we were able to select cities, states, or choose a Purpose (optimized for China, unblock that streaming assistance, etc ). It’s more awkward to use than the VPN app, but you will figure it out.

What is More interesting is that the Android app doesn’t drop the majority of the desktop’s settings and choices, which is exactly what we generally see. It’s a very similar feature set, such as a choice of protocol (OpenVPN TCP/UDP or IKEv2), a kill button, split tunneling, port forwarding, Gravity URL filtering, and more. Again, if you’ll utilize all of that functionality or some, it is well worth a go. Ipvanish

Privacy and logging

In a Review , we pointed out that PureVPN created a huge deal of its’zero log’ policy, describing that this meant the company didn’t record what you did on the internet. But the small print said there was a session logging, which appeared to add the time you connect to a server, your incoming IP address as well as the total bandwidth utilized.

This Is not a detail. In October 2017 reports emerged of a guy being arrested on suspicion of conducting”a comprehensive cyberstalking effort”, in part according to PureVPN records showing its services were accessed from originating IPs including the accused man’s home and office. The’zero log’ VPN retained some kind of logs, after all, and those were able to help link internet actions to a specific account.

PureVPN sort of responded in a blog to the Post, where the company pointed out that it did not keep full logs, such as your surfing history, and it hadn’t done anything to violate its privacy policy, where the session logging was cited.

This Does not tackle the issue of the company described itself as keeping’zero logs’ in the primary part of the website, however, when this turned out not to be entirely true. That is also not a trivial point. Logging policies are based almost entirely on trust, along with a VPN isn’t likely to be reliable if it is seen to mislead consumers or bury the fact of a situation in the small print.

PureVPN has at least updated its privacy Policy, which currently includes probably the most explicit no-logging sentence we’ve ever seen:’we don’t retain any record of your browsing activities, connection logs, records of this VPN IPs assigned to youpersonally, your initial IPs, your connection time, the background of your browsing, the websites you visited, your incoming traffic, the content or information you obtained, or the DNS queries generated by you.’

The Policy also clarifies the minimum link information it will report –‘We all know the day that you connected to some particular VPN location and from that Internet Service Provider’ — and covers lots of other vital issues in a clear and readable way.

The Fantastic news, then, is that PureVPN’s current Privacy policy says all the right things and looks good. It’s much better than most of the competition. But the catch is that the previous logging story will lead some folks to wonder whether they could trust what the company says. We can not let you know exactly what to believe, but it’s worth checking out both PureVPN’s original site defense and also its present privacy policy before you make your mind up.

Netflix

PureVPN Makes more of an effort to support site unblocking than most of the competition. The company doesn’t just make airy promises on the site then forget about them afterwards, it includes special support for streaming within its apps, in theory allowing you to get Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, BBC iPlayer along with a host of other services from wherever you are on the planet. Ipvanish

We Double-clicked the BBC choice, and viewed as the customer displayed , our default browser opened, and joined a’err-network-changed’ message. What? This seemed like a severe difficulty, however, the browser had just detected the change in our network settings as the customer connected, and after this was complete, the BBC iPlayer site opened and opened content as normal.

It was The same story with Netflix. The client launched our browser until the link was complete, so we saw the same error message, but that vanished mechanically, and we were free to browse and stream whatever Netflix articles we liked.

You are Not limited to the services built into PureVPN’s apps. YouTube was not contained on the list, for example, but connecting to a US server in the usual way got us .

Performance

Our Performance evaluations involve running custom applications which links checking ping time download speeds, location and much more. Unfortunately, we could not get this working with PureVPN, or figure out why (whether that is our fault or theirs, we can’t be sure).

But even An unusual warning in the small print explains that users aren’t permitted to have over 200 sessions a day if we did. That will not concern most folks, but it does become a problem when you are running intensive VPN benchmarks. Ipvanish

We dropped Back on our older manual method of connecting via clients and assessing the results from several speed checking websites, including SpeedTest.net, Fast.com and TestMy.net. This doesn’t give us as much information to work with, but there is still enough to get a sense for exactly what the service can deliver.

Our neighborhood UK servers varied a little more than usual, but still gave us decent download speeds of connection that was 75Mbps.

Close Rates were also mildly below average. Here they were, although netherlands connections can often deliver substantially the very same rates for us as UK servers.

US Performance ranged from approximately 30Mbps on the shore, on the east to 50Mbps. That’s far from the fastest we’ve seen, but unless you are planning 24 hours of torrenting, it’s most likely not going to cause you some issues.

As usual, Speeds tailed off radically to the more distant or less common places. For example, New Zealand averaged 12Mbps, Vietnam was 10Mbps, 1Mbps was hardly touched by Taiwan, and China ranged from 3Mbps down to a slow pace the web stalled mid-test. That puts the size of PureVPN’s system into perspective (having heaps of servers doesn’t matter whether many are unusably slow), but if you’re only planning to use the significant locations, it won’t matter very much.

On a few Events, our PureVPN Windows customer was not able to connect to our test server that is chosen. That’s not unusual, but the issue here is that the link did not time out for several moments, and the Cancel button didn’t work.

What You Want To Know About PureVPN

The Test of Speed — How Quick is PureVPN?

Let us start off by making one thing clear, i.e. whatever VPN support you use, the internet speed will take a hit. That hit is a result of the security measures used to encrypt and protect your identity. The majority of VPN services make every possible effort. Unlike what many folks will have you think like utilizing dial-up it’s not going to be.

PureVPN, when compared to other comparable VPN services, appears to be much faster. So it will live up to the promise of being the quickest in the industry. Ipvanish

How we compared and tested the operation was by using Ookala’s nifty speed testing site and program. Then we ran the speed test on both the international and domestic servers. Then we compared the outcomes, calculated their portion difference, and that is the way we discovered PureVPN to be quicker.

PureVPN has a national latency of a mere 6.7% percent. As a matter of fact, during our tests that were downloading, PureVPN improved speeds considerably which by our calculations is an percent. We discovered that competing VPN providers were much slower. Some individuals suspect were throttling download rates perhaps because they did not want to stress out their servers.

Once it comes to uploads, PureVPN did not really boost it did with downloads, but it required a mere 4.5% percent hit. If anything this is one of the upload scores we have seen from a VPN provider.

During our international speed tests, the latency increased by 200 percent. Though download rates have been still a whopping 403.8percent percent better than some of the competing products I tested it against. The uploads were 22.7% percent slower that is second best compared to possibly Hotspot Shield which enhanced the upload speed by 1.4% percent.

A Mind-Blowing Number of Servers

The map on the left allows you skip the program’s default recommendation and decide on a server for yourself. Remember that by default PureVPN selects the fastest server which is the nearest one. When in China I discovered it kept picking up servers in Hong Kong by default which is not nearby but also the fact that Hong Kong’s cyberspace is not as rigorously censored as mainland China.

PureVPN has over 2000 servers which are spread across 140 countries and 180 areas around the world. Servers are located in Asia, Central America, South America, North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. You might believe that PureVPN just has servers in nations which don’t censor or block sites, but you’d be wrong. Servers in Russia, Turkey, and China are there in case you wanted them.

It Doesn’t Slow Down Your Internet

Over time VPN services, generally speaking, have received bad press for infamously slowing down internet speeds that consumers have never been happy with clearly. Interestingly, there are many VPN services that slow down what might be net that is slow. Fortunately, with PureVPN that is not the case even in the event that you use it to flow Netflix, YouTube, etc..

Along with not slowing down your net, PureVPN offers quite a few other attributes like robust servers that can be found across the world and which scored exceptionally throughout our speed tests. Then there’s also the fact that military-grade encryption is used by them, with programs for Android and iOS apparatus. Though there are more reasons to think about PureVPN as we’ll analyze in detail below. Ipvanish

Excellent Collection of Features and straightforward

I have used dozens of VPN programs over time, also PureVPN is like a breath of fresh air. It is very simple to use and in relation to the previous time that I used the program its geared towards individuals that are new to using VPNs. As soon as PureVPN loads you are prompted to pick from five options, i.e. Safety, Internet Freedom, Stream, Remote/Dedi IP (this attribute gives you a dedicated IP) and Document Sharing. The app then provides an experience that is predicated on the option selected.

The other thing I enjoy about PureVPN is that all the attributes are to the stage. For example, their Web Freedom feature enables you to choose what region you need to access Netflix from, such as from the united kingdom, Australia, etc.. In which it is otherwise blocked Netflix can be also accessed by you from China.

Compared to the last time I used PureVPN now around it sensed zippier. The interface was bright, with pictures some of which may be hard to read on a display that is smaller. You’ll observe the IP address, connection status, and the length of your session once you are connected to a personal server.

The visitors chart gives you a good sense of just how much bandwidth is being absorbed, which is useful for anybody on a metered internet connection. Nonetheless, it’s important to mention worrying about information caps which PureVPN does not have any. So, you’re just limited to what the ISP has in store for you!

Like most other competing VPN providers, you choose the server and the country it is based in. You can search for servers and then click on them to connect. Some servers based on where you’re found are currently going to be quicker than others because of lower latency.

You could also select which protocols to use. Pick between OpenVPN, IKEv2, SSTP, PPTP, and L2TP. Then there is PureVPN’s very own stealth protocol which according to the company ensures the best anonymity. Since people like me have a tough time understanding which protocols to pick, PureVPN makes it simple by providing a speed and safety rating for every. The important point to note here is that as the safety boosts the rate slows down. You’ll need to hit a compromise between both depending on what’s needed. By default, the software selects a protocol. Most people who don’t work for the CIA (pun intended) will be OK using the default alternative. Ipvanish

Hands-on and Initial Impressions

We’ve admittedly used PureVPN before, but following a hiatus or perhaps two years we pretty much forgot how things worked. As soon as you’ve decided to register and download their software, you are going to have to enter your email and select a password. Interestingly and perhaps confusingly, this isn’t what you will use to the program to log-in, but it’s used for billing purposes.

Once subscribers have compensated, they receive an email with the username and password in plain text. We have used other VPNs that use the same method to payment identities that were separate from consumer identities that guarantees anonymity that was better. Nevertheless we believe that it may be perplexing to first-time users but its something you get used to. Additionally, in our experience the email will land for some reason in your junk folder, so make certain before calling support that you check that.

Support

PureVPN has a support Website with a huge number of troubleshooting manuals and tutorials. The opening page points you to categories like Getting Started, Setup Guide, Troubleshoot, For Users in China and the best way to see Netflix US, for example, and nearly all of these segments include more content than you’d expect.

The Setup Guide has subsections for Routers, Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, Smart TV and Devices, for instance, and even a number of those individual sections have more content than the support site of lesser VPNs.

Although it’s an impressive Quantity of work, we are Unsure how reliable and successful it might be. We checked the guide OpenVPN setup manual and discovered it failed. OpenVPN wasn’t installed properly, there were no PureVPN settings files, and there was no troubleshooting information from the guide to help us figure out that.

If the Site can not help, you can send an email or increase a support ticket from within the customer. We took the ticket route and the service done very well, with the aid team sending a useful and friendly answer to our test question to us in just more than an hour.

Alternatively, Chat can be used by you . We discovered it might take a minute or two to receive a reply, and even then, the broker didn’t give us the degree of aid since we’d obtained to our query. PureVPN could not get near the level of support we had obtained from opponents like ExpressVPN, afterward, but we’re still glad the choice is available. And with email service to hand, any chat issues you may have are not too important. Ipvanish

Last verdict

PureVPN Comes bundled with a heap of features, which is surprising considering the price. These do not always work as you might expect and there are tons of usability issues with the programs — but demanding users who will utilize this degree of VPN power must give PureVPN an appearance.